Dryad Papillon Artisan Perfumes 2017

Dryad opens with a slightly sweet, fruity floral orange blossom and apricot focal tandem with underlying smooth orange fruit support before transitioning to its heart. As the composition enters its early heart woody green cedrat melds into the orange lingering from the open, as hay-like herbal deertongue joins green spicy, woody galbanum and mild woody vetiver in support. During the late dry-down the composition completely shifts to a mossy (likely oakmoss and tree moss derived) green late dry-down with little remaining of the previous notes through the finish. Projection is average and longevity outstanding at well over 15 hours on skin.

Dryad smells fantastic. As soon as one applies the perfume on skin a gorgeous orange blossom emerges that quickly morphs into an equally appealing vetiver and galbanum enhanced spicy-woody heart. Quite frankly, this profile I expected to continue through the late dry-down, but the perfume rather surprisingly shifts gears completely, morphing into an equally appealing but all together different mossy-green focal late dry-down that lingers for hours and hours. The mossy-green dry-down definitely contains some oakmoss within, but its smooth facet and seemingly endless duration leads this writer to believe the oakmoss is heavily infused by tree moss. Another possibility is this is a tremendous implementation of the IFRA compliant low atranol oakmoss that has proved unimpressive in so many other compositions. However the perfumer achieved the highly appealing mossy-green base, it is it be commended. The bottom line is the $186 per 50ml bottle Dryad is a fine example of a modern day green chypre that gets just about everything right, earning it an "excellent" 4 stars out of 5 rating, and a strong recommendation to all.